People who are not willing to pay for things will not have them. And because of what was done in the past, and continues to be done today, people who are willing to pay for things may not get them either.

The problem is that the same state legislators and MTA Board members who caused the problem are still there, backed by the same interests that benefitted as the future was sold off. That’s why they won’t tell the truth. Because it is the truth about them.

If I were setting the fare, it would be much lower, but there would be a “Sins of the Past Surcharge” on top of it, to cover the cost of debts, retroactive pension deals and underfunding, etc. So people would know what happened, and why public services seem to be such a ripoff when comparing what they pay to what they get. The same with tolls and taxes. Let people who aren’t reading Streetsblog or the newspaper see what has happened, in their face.

Anonymous

It seems that failing to protect a child on the road is a crime, while actively killing one is not. Just ask the Georgia mother who was convicted of vehicular manslaughter for “jaywalking” with her child across an inhospitable stroad.

Parent

Shame on Cy Vance.

Anonymous

Is there any clearer example of the perversion of windshield perspective than response to the killing of Diarrassouba Amara? I mean, the differences are clear: drivers are hapless victim of the gods’ whims and non-drivers are criminals.

One question: what happens if you’re a crossing guard and you, like, need to go to the bathroom? Do you have to just suck it up and wear a diaper–like an astronaut?

http://485i.com Brian Van Nieuwenhoven

I find it utterly sad that this poor crossing guard is being directly blamed for the circumstances of the child’s death, when there were sufficient traffic control devices present to keep the child perfectly safe. Not only did the child seem to have the right of way but the truck driver committed several serious moving violations and it’s possible that the only thing the crossing guard could have done was to attempt to drag Amar backward forcibly from the crosswalk once she realized the truck was about to pin him, IF she was on the same corner (a 25% chance). I don’t think even pedestrian refuges could have prevented this if the truck was moving through as it seemed to have been.

I wish this would motivate people to become politically involved to restrict and closely patrol truck use in the dense parts of the city. Instead it’s going to become a shitshow of scapegoating a defenseless civil service worker. Shame on all of us if that’s how it goes down.

Joe R.

@dporpentine:disqus Just carry a bottle or a small bucket with you. And if a cop tries to ticket you for public urination, explain that if you leave your post and a child gets killed crossing the street, you would face charges.

Just when I thought this insanity couldn’t get any worse, it did.

Bolwerk

@qrt145:disqus: that woman’s crime was probably being black and poor.

Anonymous

Not to excuse the insanity, but crossing guards’ shifts are relatively short, so my guess is that the expectation is that most people should be able to hold it that long (assuming they don’t drink too much fluids!)

Niccolo Machiavelli

My father was not an educated man, to be honest, an uneducated man, but I have always tried to live by the small pieces of his worldly understandings that he managed to impart. One of them was “when all you have is a hammer everything looks like a nail.”

That’s your boy Larry Littlefield. Imagine taking a truck murder by a non-union trucker and turning it into a bitch-slap for public sector contract negotiations.